


A Novel without Romance

by kyrieanne



Category: Jane the Virgin (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:29:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5469884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyrieanne/pseuds/kyrieanne





	A Novel without Romance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oddishly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddishly/gifts).



Jane Gloriana Villanueva never imagined that her son's first Christmas would be spent in the lobby of a police station lobby waiting for information about his father’s ex-wife, who was pregnant with his twin half-siblings, who was charged with killing a man that she had held hostage with her mother, who incidentally tried to kill Mateo's great-grandmother. 

No, they don't include a page for that special first memory in your typical baby book.

Another thing Jane never expected she would be doing on Christmas morning: writing a romance while two men who loved her lingered in the periphery. Rafael’s mind - understandably - was elsewhere. He paced with Mateo asleep in the crook of his left arm. He tugs at his hair with his free hand and it sends it awry. Jane glances over the top of her laptop and the stray thought trails through her mind. 

She likes him best this way: askew. Less the perfect playboy and more the man underneath that facade. That is the man that catches Jane’s breath. 

Not under these circumstances of course. These circumstances are terrible. There’s nothing romantic about spending Christmas in the lobby of a police station waiting to see if a pregnant mother-to-be killed a man. 

The back of Jane’s neck burns hot. She turns around in the hard plastic chair and Michael stands on the other side of the police counter. 

He was there when Jane arrived with Mateo and Rafael. Rafael didn’t seem shocked to see Michael at the police station from which he’d been fired, and he took Mateo from her arms without words. 

Michael ducked his head 

Michael genuinely tells Rafael he’s sorry for what’s happening with Petra. Jane can see the muscle in Rafael’s jaw clench. To Petra. This is happening to Petra, she wants to say but it’s such a small thing that she keeps quiet. 

“I’m sorry about what happening with Petra.” 

Jane shifted the baby bag on her shoulder. She’s unsure why, but anger blossomed in her chest. “To Petra. It’s happening to Petra.” 

Michael rocked on his heels, “Since when did you decide to like Petra?” 

“During the six months you were gone. Do you want to tell me where you were? Because clearly you’ve left something out if you’re down here hanging out at the police station.” 

Michael crossed his arms, “Jane, I don’t owe you explanations for...for anything.” He swallowed hard, “We don’t go together like that anymore. We’ve become different...people.” 

Jane didn’t say anything then. He’d said it all. 

But now he is behind the police desk staring at her with an expression so frank that it hurt. She is sure her heart beats faster. His lips are parted as if words hung between them, and they did. So much left unsaid and things that she wished she could unsay. 

“Jane?” 

Rafael stands in front of her. Mateo sleeps on his father’s shoulder with a tiny fist curled beneath his chin. 

“They’re letting me see her. Can you take him?” 

“Of course.” 

Jane slides the laptop off her lap and took her son in her arms. His weight is a welcome comfort. She curls around him, but reaches for Rafael’s wrist. 

“She’s terrified. Remember that. There are these tiny people who are totally reliant on her and she’s failed them. When Mateo was taken it was the most scared I’ve ever been.” 

She knows it isn’t quite the same situation. Petra isn’t entirely innocent, but if Jane has learned anything over the past year it’s that life has more shades to it than most stories. Rafael nods and squeezes her hand in a silent thank you before disappearing behind the double doors. 

Jane rocks Mateo and trails her finger through his head of hair. It’s spiky and soft. She looks around the police station: Michael behind the desk talking to his former partner, the double doors still swinging, and then what is missing: her Abuela and mother. This isn’t how her son’s first Christmas was supposed to be, but the how of Mateo’s existence wasn’t exactly how things were supposed to be either. None of it belonged to the normal life Jane imagined for herself. 

Professor Chavez told Jane to play to her strengths and Jane’s strength was romance. It was stories about love and sacrifice desire and wanting. Those that was supposed to be Jane’s specialty. But it is Christmas morning, her first Christmas morning with Mateo, and she is sitting in the lobby of the police station across from a man with whom she had never really been, but they had a son together and his family has had become her family and his family occupied a different world than the one in which Jane lived. Rafael’s family belong in the novel full of the things we call romance: intrigue, desire, and affairs of the heart. All the heightened human emotions that Jane was supposed to be good at. 

But she doesn’t feel good at it. She’s sitting here unsure if she should be here. Somewhere along the way she’d become Petra’s friend, or some category approaching friendship. With Petra nothing was ever straight forward. 

“Jane, I think I finally get her. She told me everything and she asked for help.” Rafael had said on the porch of Jane’s house. He’d been on his way to the police station and stopped by to let Jane know why he wouldn’t be over for Christmas lunch. 

“Her own mother turned her in?”

“She’s got no one.” 

“What about that husband she married?” 

“I don’t want him anywhere near my kids.” 

Jane nodded and Rafael turned to go down the walk. 

“Rafael!” Jane called out before she knew what she was doing. “Wait. I want to be there. Mateo too. For you.” 

“But it’s Christmas. His first.” 

“I know…” Jane stammered. She wasn’t sure what she was doing. “But if I want my son to know it’s never too late to do the right thing. If so I’ve got to start by believing it myself. If you say Petra wants to do the right thing then she needs to know she’s not alone.” 

Rafael’s shy smile turned something over in Jane’s stomach there on her porch, and now in the waiting room Jane doesn’t know how she feels. She’s still so mad at Rafael for lying about turning Michael in, but she can see it from his point of view. It wasn’t as simple as the right thing or wrong thing to do. Her belief in Michael wasn’t misplaced; she believed that. Still, her’s wasn’t the only point of view to consider when it came to Mateo. It’s a strange sensation to have to make room for Rafael like this: his family, his point of view, and the fact that sometimes Jane doesn’t have the only answer. There’s an intimacy between them that has snuck up on her. With Michael, Jane feels the comfort of their past, of the woman she was up until that moment in which she found out she was pregnant. With Rafael, that comfort doesn’t exist, but there is this. 

She’s sitting in a police station lobby on Christmas morning with a babe she didn’t expect, but wouldn’t change a single choice that led to him lying here in her arms. The weight of him anchors her. She hugs Mateo closer and glances at the laptop in the chair next to her. 

Jane knows how to write a love story. She knows less about her own love life and she’s terrified that her life will spin out-of-control at any moment. Except that it kind of already has. It includes criminal masterminds, gruesome murders, and mistaken identities. Her heart shows all the trappings of a romance novel: she’s has feelings for two men and no idea what to do. A love story, Jane thinks, is about the happy ending, but also the unexpected roads we take to get there.


End file.
